sunny sunday

Today was the third day of an unseasonably warm sunny spell in the middle of what really should still be winter here. Jessie took the opportunity to tan her tummy.

Some of the flats where I live are having new uPVC windows and frames installed, and the old wooden ones are getting chucked out. They aren’t particularly quaint, since the complex was only built in the 1960s, but still – an old frame’s an old frame, right?

I bought new sandpaper last week for the belt sander that Rob inherited from his dad. I asked the man in the hardware shop for very coarse sandpaper and he said, Okay but be careful, it’s really coarse. Maybe you should try something a bit finer? Nah, I said, I don’t want to mess around. I should have listened – a couple of secs of power sanding with the coarse stuff got me right down to the wood, much further than I’d wanted to go.

I had to repaint it.  And put Rob in charge of the sanding process this time:

And now I have this:

Not owning a spirit level meant we had to go by eye, but my eye never was very good when it came to getting things straight. I used to do a lot of sewing in my 20s, and never ever managed to get a straight hem on a skirt or a dress.

Anyway, skew or not, I’m very pleased with my window with the turquoise doily bunting.

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through the window

I picked up this old window frame from one of those little hole-in-the-wall shops off Main Road in Salt River. Set me back a whole R40.

This week, with all this lovely sunshine-in-winter we’ve been having, I finally a) got it outside, b) sanded it down a bit, c) blobbed on a bit of blue paint,

d) sanded it some more, e) screwed in some picture hooks on the inside, f) added some hearts, and g) hung it up.

  

As you can see, I left the back pretty much untouched and, even though I got a couple of splinters, I still couldn’t be bothered to fix it. It’s the rough look, okay. I like it. And yes, it’s because I’m lazy.

The mosaic double-heart was made for me by Rob, and the one underneath is a ceramic heart by a very talented Cape Town artist whose name I simply cannot remember. I do remember buying it for R90 at the Constantia Waldorf medieval market a couple of years ago.

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